So today my Linksys (Cisco) WAP started acting flaky. My Fedora laptop had low throughput and lots of dropped connections from about 20 ft away with an SNR of about 40db. What the heck, the WAP has been on continuously for probably a year. It could be time for a reboot. ... and so the adventure began.
I'll leave out the click-by-click trek, but for some reason the WAP MAC address had spontaneously changed from 00:16:b6:55:17:53 (a Cisco MAC) to 00:90:4c:91:00:01, which IEEE says is
00-90-4C (hex) EPIGRAM, INC.
00904C (base 16) EPIGRAM, INC. 870 WEST MAUDE AVE. SUNNYVALE CA 94086 UNITED STATES
Seem a bit freaky? Apparently I have some (but not much) company.
00:90:4c:91:00:01. The discussion volume appears to be quite low (like nothing on USENET that I found), so either people are just throwing these things away or I'm right behind the cutting edge.
Are others seeing a similar effect on their WAP54Gs? I've lost a bit of confidence in my WAP, but after a "factory reset," going through the setup, and adjusting my DHCP reservation for the WAP, it seems to be working OK again.
Thoughts, anyone?